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The best Rich alternatives

6 tools that do a similar job to Rich, 6 of them open source. Each entry says what it does and who it suits, so you can pick the one that fits instead of the most famous.

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Rich

A Python library for colorful, formatted text, tables and progress bars in the terminal.

  1. 1

    Textual

    Open source · MIT · ★ 37.6k

    A Python framework for building terminal and web-browser user interfaces.

    Best for: Python developers who want a terminal app with buttons, tables and forms; Developers building internal tools or dashboards that run over SSH or in a terminal

    Full review Rich vs Textual
  2. 2

    Shiki

    Open source · MIT · ★ 13.9k

    A syntax highlighter for code, based on TextMate grammars, published as an npm package.

    Best for: Developers building documentation or blog sites that show code samples; Teams that want highlighting that matches TextMate or VS Code grammar rules

    Full review Rich vs Shiki
  3. 3

    Docling

    Open source · MIT · ★ 70k

    Python library that converts PDFs and office files into structured text for AI use.

    Best for: Python developers building retrieval or RAG pipelines over PDFs and office files; Teams that need tables and reading order preserved when extracting document content

    Full review Rich vs Docling
  4. 4

    Spectre.Console

    Open source · MIT · ★ 11.7k

    A .NET library for building colorful, cross-platform console applications with tables, panels and styled text.

    Best for: C# or .NET developers writing command-line tools; Developers who want formatted tables or panels in terminal output

    Full review Rich vs Spectre.Console
  5. 5

    Filament

    Open source · MIT · ★ 32.4k

    A PHP framework for building Laravel admin panels and app interfaces quickly.

    Best for: Laravel developers building internal admin panels; Teams that want data tables and forms without writing front-end code from scratch

    Full review
  6. 6

    Linguist

    Open source · MIT · ★ 13.8k

    Ruby library that detects a code file's language and reports language breakdowns for a Git repository.

    Best for: Developers who want a language breakdown of a Git repository from the command line; Maintainers who need to fix how GitHub labels their repository's languages

    Full review

How we pick: tools in the same category that solve the same problem, projects that name each other as alternatives, and open-source projects that describe themselves as an alternative to Rich. We don't take payment for placement.